Minute Beans

Your time is money.
This account-Your Life, Net Worth
spent counting minutes

Until it never
earned any interest-ing
ways to get rich quick.

Capitalism
liquid mold, carbon copies
mint makers go broke

count on your changes
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ceipt not required.

The storm has come to pass

We didn't have any pictures, she told me.
My mother said the only thing we had from him
was the toy chest he made that we kept inside my closet,
the one I used to climb in.

I'd hide in the darkness, inside the closet, inside the chest-
and I tried to believe, maybe it was all about him.

My mother has many pictures from when I was little
of my step-father's rock-and-roll band. He played guitar.
And in those old photos, there in the middle of the bass drum,
where the pillow for practice goes,
you see there is a little curled up body,

unmistakably my own.
Even long after I've long outgrown these small spaces,
I can remember feeling this heartbeat
like my own-

And I recognized, it was not about him either.
There were pictures.
She lied-plain and simply-I found-
I liked to hide
myself too.

And I can still distinctly recall feeling the floods
of darkness and thunder washing over me,
but there were no pictures of this I could find.

My mother would remind me,
not of myself.

Blonde and radiant, back then
she was more like the sun,
and likewise, one learns
too much exposure can lead to cancer.

It is the smell of rain that takes me back, the storm
that delivers these dank reminiscences,
dropping memory all over me
wet and vivid, here and now.

And under this heavily cloaked night, the sky hangs
starless and preoccupied with pushing clouds around,
building up pressure and waving flags,
whereby I cannot help but find that I share
a stark resemblance
to thin air.




Photo By Adolf Zika (Adolf Zika´s archive) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sea minor

The day you were born
It would never be the same
as it ever was.

This day, at that time
started this life
                       from lives past-
Passed through you to you
creating something
from some things that were before
you arrived as you.

This time and time again

many things came first
many more things will come to pass
none have counted you
in years
             -as the last

-pushing through, pulling you-

The only time you
were you,
we met
            through others
matters were made

any day now we will change
-back-
into strangers, fate carried vessels
pulling our chords,
                              the other way.



Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Puzzling poet

The last line was laid and this tied it all together,
Success!

Yet in the excitement of the assembled vivid scene,

the poet dropped his masterpiece onto the tile floor,

Whereby words shattered and scattered about

Everywhere.

Dejected and deterred, he could only kneel down

and try to pick up the pieces flung in far off places,

watchful for synonymous edges 

and similar shades

and of course, he paid particular attention
to the edges.

It had been done before, 

he told himself to start over,

it would be easier this time,

never imagining a different picture

put together,

he caught himself still glued to the finished image

of the new poem before him-
Stunning!

From out of Nowhere

its edges disappeared,

he saw it would never be finished,
so he took it apart and put it away.




Artwork by Harry Willson Watrous [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Terminal Velocity

My toes point to that familiar path
over which I tread the same very way
without thought, after days, after days
ground-soft
                               only it doesn't end.
The terminus dissipates before me
the exit escapes
itself

fracturing new matter,
atoms posing in new positions,
the frames along the long hall
                                        rattle and
all fall, shattering into
collage.

I have moved on and on
and recognize how the light changes
just enough to see
this
step
through and parallel time
at equal velocities and thus
all must be still-

transported. This is how
I can be carried along
in this metropolitan body,
incentivized, yet
                    infested with crime,
corrupt with ego, more so
hiding in skin
I was entrusted to always protect-
                                        but don't.

Animal eyes see me
burrow in my bi-pedestal body
and hear my heart beat itself and
echo through my unshod feet-
yet I do not run,
                                   I carry on,
erect, by these same narrow walls
plastered shells, caves or caverns
alternating distances passed
by vision and memory
                                        alone,
                                   barefoot,
weary but walking on and on
this way
toward the vanishing point.

Photograph By PCR Services Corporation, creator [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mud day

Thrust outdoors into the somber metallic dawn whose grey washcloth
dripping with fog covers my exposed face and outer extremities, slips into
folded crevasses, as in the crook of an ivory neck, exuding an aroma of must
flooding pores make a body all the more aware of vulnerabilities,
small against the vast backdrop erasing evidence of the transference between strata
and stratosphere.

One leaden foot lurches forward despite the denial of movement on raised skin,
my hair collects the dancing beads and leaves my cheeks ruby
in the shameful way that I have seen how my hair stays grey instead of brown when wet,
and yet no time has (a) past...

the mists persist in making all clouds disperse
at our feet collecting weight on lashed eyes dropping diamonds between the sharp tan blades
repelling the chance for new life, making the bed of earth condensed to gather all the necessary elements for the making of a Mud day.

Painting by Frederic Edwin Church [Public domain], c. 1869-70 via Wikimedia Commons.

City folk

Someone said,
the full moon looks larger in the city
because of skyscrapers-
which said nothing
about people feeling smaller,
more condensed when clustered.

Tall shadows do distort our perception of time,
such as dusk does bend warm light
in the redwood grove.

Somehow,
the moon still washes over and spills into all
narrow alleys and dives deep into dark
watering holes
with its aloof blue glow,
at some points
her own dead valleys visible
from under the canopy of cemented jungles
patching the land up.
The beacon looms over
with tiny towers babbling in slang.

Concrete was not so.

We stand closest together is
where we feel the smallest.

Somehow it seems

we will never be safe from these lights. 




Painting by August Splitgerber (1844–1918) (http://www.neumeister.com/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.